Kristin stopped under a solitary spruce tree in the middle of the hillside; she stood with her hands wrapped around the heavy weight of the flower stalks that were draped over her arm. From here she could look northward and see halfway to Dovre. In many places the grain was gathered in shocks in the fields.
The hillsides were yellow and sun-scorched over there too. But it was never truly green here in the valley, she thought, not as green as in Tr?ndelag.
Yes, she longed for the home they had had there: the manor that stood so high and magnificent on the broad breast of the ridge, with fields and meadows spreading out all around, extending below to the cluster of leafy woods that sloped down toward the lake at the bottom of the valley. The vast view across low, forested hills that undulated, wave upon wave, south toward the Dovre Range. And the lush meadows so thick and tall in the summer, red with crimson flowers beneath the red evening sky, the second crop of hay so succulent and green in the autumn.
Yes, sometimes she even felt a longing for the fjord. The skerries of Birgsi, the docks with the boats and ships, the boathouses, the smell of tar and fishing nets and the sea—all those things she had disliked so much when she first went north.
Erlend must be longing for that smell, and for the sea and the sea wind.
She missed everything that she had once found so wearisome: all the housekeeping, the scores of servants, the clamor of Erlend’s men as they rode into the courtyard with clanging weapons and jangling harnesses, the strangers who came and went, bringing them great news from all over the land and gossip about people in the town and countryside. Now she realized how quiet her life had become when all this had been silenced.
Nidaros with its churches and cloisters and banquets at the great estates in town. She longed to walk through the streets with her own servingman and maid accompanying her, to climb the loft stairs to the merchants’ shops, to choose and reject wares, to step aboard the boats on the river to buy goods: English linen hats, elegant shawls, wooden horses with riders that would thrust out their lances if you pulled a string. She thought about the meadows outside town near Nidareid where she used to walk with her children, looking at the trained dogs and bears of the wandering minstrels, buying gingerbread and walnuts.
And there were times when she longed to dress in her finery again. A silk shift and a delicate, fine wimple. The sleeveless surcoat made of pale blue velvet that Erlend had bought for her the winter before the misfortune befell them. It was edged with marten fur along the deep cut of the bodice and around the wide arm-holes, which reached all the way down to her hips, revealing the belt underneath.
And occasionally she longed for . . . oh no, she should be sensible and be happy about that—happy as long as she was free from having any more children. When she fell ill this autumn after the great slaughtering . . . It was best that it happened that way. But she had wept a little, those first few nights afterward.
It seemed an eternity since she had held an infant. Munan was only four winters old, but she had been forced to give him into the care of strangers before he was even a year. When he came back to her, he could already walk and talk, and he didn’t know her.
Erlend. Oh, Erlend. Deep in her heart she knew that he wasn’t as nonchalant as he seemed. This man who was always restless, now he seemed always so calm. Like a stream that finally runs up against a steep cliff and lets itself be diverted, trickling out into the peat to become a calm pool with marshlands all around. He wandered about J?rundgaard, doing nothing, and then he would find one or another of his sons to keep him company in his idleness. Or he would go out hunting with them. Once in a while he would go off to tar and repair one of the fishing boats they kept at the lake. Or he would set about breaking in one of the young colts, although he never had much success; he was far too impatient.
He kept to himself and pretended not to notice that no one sought out his company. His sons followed their father’s example. They were not well liked, these outsiders who had been driven to the valley by misfortune and who still went about like proud strangers, never inquiring about the customs of the region or its people. Ulf Haldorss?n was outright despised. He was openly scornful of the inhabitants of the valley, calling them stupid and old-fashioned; people who hadn’t grown up near the sea weren’t proper folks at all.
As for Kristin herself . . . She knew that she didn’t have many friends here in her own valley either. Not anymore.
She straightened her back in the peat-brown homespun dress, shading her eyes with her hand against the golden flood of afternoon sunlight.